The Waking of the Human Soul and the Forming of Destiny

Schmidt Number: S-5267

On-line since: 2nd February, 2004

The Need for Understanding The Christ

II

The constitution, the entire life, of the human soul we conceive much
too simply as we human beings of the present time, of the nineteenth,
twentieth century experience this. What we learn from external history
is in great measure only outside occurrence, far less the history of
the human soul itself. The changes which occur with the soul life of
the human being are considered very little. Now, it must be borne in
mind that earlier periods did not have the same occasion for giving
attention to this history of the human soul life as does the present
time. For the present time, which, when we consider it as a long
historical epoch, began in the first third of the fifteenth century,
 this present epoch presents man with very special
responsibilities, such as he can discharge only by means of his
consciousness, whereas earlier responsibilities could be discharged by
means of certain instinct, even though an instinct humanly formed. We
have heard in various ways and perhaps read in cycles, how in ancient
times man possessed a kind of instinctive clairvoyance, but how the
evolution of humanity has consisted in the loss of this instinctive
clairvoyance, and that in its place has appeared the contemporary
constitution of soul, which is intellectual in character and has
developed primarily the human understanding. I do not say that for
this reason the capacities of feeling and volition have not been
active in the human being, but what constitutes the greatest thing in
our contemporary civilization, what we experience at the present time
more than anything else, this calls upon the understanding, upon the
capacity for conception. But the present day human being has good
reason for asking the question what significance an intellectual
civilization possesses for the human soul. This question can be
completely answered only if one gives a little attention to that
reference to the pre-earthly human life to which attention was
directed yesterday in a different connection.

As human beings of the present time, we experience concepts as
something very abstract, as something that we do not experience in the
same degree as that in which concepts were experienced in the time of
the ancient instinctive clairvoyance by human beings. And if, from
these abstract, intellectualistic concepts, we look at pre-earthly
human existence, we find that something entirely different existed in
place of what is today abstract thinking. Moreover, since we possessed
no body, no organism, in the pre-earthly life, as we still possessed
only the soul-spiritual nature, thoughts were something entirely
different. Thoughts then still possessed a soul life. We then
experienced a thought in such a way that we knew that thoughts are
spread everywhere in the entire world, and we draw these out of the
world into our own life of soul.

Today the view of the human being is that thoughts are something which
he creates with his brain. This is just as clever as if a person
taking a glass of water to himself should believe that the water comes
out of his tongue, is not taken in from without. In reality, thoughts
are something active, living, the working forces in the whole world,
and we simply draw them out of the world. Our organic system is only
the vessel into which we draw the thoughts by means of our ego. But
the erroneous idea that we of ourselves create the thoughts, to this
error one can surrender oneself only during the earthly life between
birth and death. As long as we live in the pre-earthly existence, it
is clear that the realm of thought completely fills everything in our
surroundings just as air does during our existence between birth and
death. We know that, so to speak, we breathe in thoughts and again
breathe them out, that they are something active, productive. It is of
the utmost importance that we become aware that the forces of thought
are something quite different in the pre-earthly life and in the
earthly existence. When we come upon a corpse somewhere in the world,
we do not say to ourselves that this corpse could have been brought
into its present form by any kind of forces which we call forces of
nature. We know it is the residue of a living human being. The living
human being must necessarily have been in existence there; a force of
nature can never give to a corpse the form in which it exists. The
corpse can be nothing else than the residue of a living human being.

What we are able to observe in regard to the life of thinking in the
human being as we possess this in the earthly existence gives us a
basis upon which to understand that the forces of thought we develop
during the earthly life do not come into existence of themselves in
our physical organism, but that they are the residue of living forces
we possessed in the pre-earthly existence. With the same certainty
with which one says that the corpse is the dead residue of a living
person he can say also that abstract thinking such as we have at the
present time is the dead residue of what we possessed during the
pre-earthly existence in living thought.

The living thought dies as we are born  or as we are conceived
 and what becomes effective in us as forces of thinking is the
corpse of that living thinking which we possessed during the
pre-earthly existence. We do not quite rightly understand the earthly
thinking until we look upon it as the residue of the pre-earthly
thinking, just as we look upon the corpse as the residue of a living
person. This awareness of human thinking, which is the residue of a
living thinking, must gradually more and more permeate humanity; only
then will one look upon oneself in the right way as a human being;
then will one look back in the right way to the pre-earthly existence
as one looks back from the corpse, in which only the forces of nature
are existent, to the living human being, in whom loftier forces are
alive. But one considers this entire thing in the right light only
when one knows that this thinking, as we possess it at the present
time, tending only toward abstraction, we developed first since the
fifteenth century. Naturally, it evolved in various ways in the
various individual races and groups of human beings, but in general
the situation has been such for civilized humanity that humanity has
evolved to this dead thinking in the first third of the fifteenth
century; that this thinking became ever more and more completely dead
until a certain culmination of this condition of deadness came about
exactly in the last third of the nineteenth century.

Indeed, if we look further back in the course of evolution, we find
that in these ancient times the human souls, as they passed through
conception and birth, brought over into the earthly existence
something out of the pre-earthly life. The living nature of ancient
myths, ancient popular legends, the ancient formative forces of the
soul which are by no means the same as our present activity in
phantasy, could not have developed if something had not streamed in
from the living pre-earthly existence, if earthly thinking had already
become entirely abstract. Indeed, it can be said in a certain sense
that even at present there remains a final residue of pre-earthly
thinking in the period of childhood, although this is lost in the
course of life. But those human beings of a more ancient time were
entirely different from contemporary human beings in their entire life
of soul. Just imagine quite truly that we could experience at the
present time this living thinking, could experience still such
clairvoyance as the human soul possessed in ancient times, that you
experienced imaginations, that these imaginations could affect you so
powerfully that they would appear to you as revelations of
divine-spiritual forces. You would never arrive at a consciousness of
freedom. The true feeling of freedom developed for the first time in
civilized humanity. The fact that man has been able to become free he
owes to the circumstance that living thinking is not active at least
in his waking state, but a dead thinking into which he injects
whatever he wishes out of his free will. Man does not think as he
thought at an earlier time; he himself begins to think. But beginning
oneself to think means to inject human will into this thinking, and
when man finds a dead thinking he can pour his free will into this
thinking. Thus man had to advance to dead thinking in order to become
a free being in the course of earthly evolution.

You see that, if we consider in the same way the evolution of the
human soul life, it becomes clear to us that there is meaning in the
formation of the whole human evolution on earth.

But we will now once more return to somewhat earlier times. That which
occurred as a deadening, an abstracting, an intellectualizing of
thinking in the first third of the fifteenth century had been in the
course of preparation for a long time very gradually beforehand. Such
things do not occur all at once but pass through a preparation, pass
through a certain beginning finally to reach the highest point. Now it
is clearly to be seen that the first beginning toward this abstract
thinking occurred in the fourth Christian century. I mean that in the
fourth Post-Christian century there began the first trace becoming
dominant in human consciousness that man believed he creates his
thoughts. This could not have been thought by a Greek. The Greek was
altogether conscious still of a certain living quality of this
thinking and was conscious that thoughts exist everywhere within
things; that he simply draws them himself out of things. The opinion
that man creates his thoughts came about through the fact that
thoughts became ever more and more lifeless. And these lifeless
thoughts, with which one can, so to speak, do whatever one will, made
their appearance for the first time in the fourth Christian century.
This proceeded gradually still further until, in the fifteenth
century, the consciousness (which we still possess today) clearly took
on its form.

But what resulted from this in the evolution of humanity? In the
fourth Post-Christian century occurred the beginning of an
intellectual, abstract thinking. This means, however, nothing else
than that the Mystery of Golgotha, the appearance of Christ upon the
earth, occurred during a time when the human soul was still filled
with living thoughts. In this respect much has been lost to humanity
in the matter of its consciousness. It is true that humanity has in
this way achieved freedom, but very much, nevertheless, has been lost.
When Christ appeared upon the earth he was received by a certain
number of human beings who still possessed an inwardly living, active
thinking, who still possessed in their thinking a residue of the
pre-earthly existence. And these persons related themselves to the
Mystery of Golgotha in a manner entirely different from that of the
human beings of a later time. Just think for a moment, that till this
period, human beings said to themselves  they did not clearly
express this; everything was then enveloped in pictures, but the
consciousness was there  I am now upon the earth; I have as an
earthly human being my thinking; but this directs me backward through
birth and conception into the pre-earthly existence, into a different
world; it is out of this that I have descended. Man felt himself here
as a projection of what he was in the pre-earthly existence. Human
beings of that time knew quite clearly that with the earthly existence
they were continuing an earlier, pre-earthly existence, even though in
that time human beings saw into the pre-earthly existence as if
through a glass, darkly. This consciousness, that man is a being
descended from the heavens to the earth, disappeared in its essence
during the fourth Post-Christian century.

From this point of view also was conceived the event of Golgotha. If
mention was made to these persons by initiates  who were at that
time still in existence, not possessed of such wisdom as were the
initiates of the ancient mysteries, but still having at least a
residue of the ancient mystery wisdom,  if mention was made by
them of the Christ, their answer was that Jesus Christ had been at
home previously in the same world in which we also were present before
we descended to the earth; there He was also. That was His world; only
He had never previously left that world. It is indeed a characteristic
of earthly human beings that they had to descend to the earth since
very early times; there they went away from the Christ in order to
come down to the earth. If, then, mention was made in the ancient
mysteries of the Christ  indeed, mention was constantly made of
the Christ in the ancient mysteries, although He was not called by the
name Christ  then thought had to be directed to the
pre-earthly existence; it had to be said to human beings: If you wish
to know something of the Christ, you must not hold fast to your
earthly consciousness, but must look upward to the pre-earthly
existence.

Indeed, we must introduce something from this pre-earthly existence in
order to understand what I wish to bring out today. Standing here upon
the earth as earthly human beings, we look up to the sun, we form
conceptions of the sun, we even develop hypotheses regarding it: that
this sun is a ball of gas or something similar. Indeed, from the
earthly point of view it is inevitable that one forms such
conceptions; but people believe that this could be the same from all
possible points of view. Before we descended to the earth, then also
we saw the sun, but out of cosmic spaces, from the other side, as it
were. The sun was not then a physical object but a gathering of
spiritual Beings, and the most significant among these Beings for
humanity before the Mystery of Golgotha was the Christ. Thus one may
also make the following statement: when in the pre-Christian time
people were initiated into what later was transformed into the Mystery
of Golgotha, it became clear to them that human beings beheld the sun
in the pre-earthly existence and became aware of the Christ; that,
when man then descended to the earth, he saw the sun from the other
side, but the Christ was concealed from him: only through mystery
wisdom could he be guided to the Christ. This was experienced in the
first period of Christian evolution as the nature of Christianity:
that the great Sun Spirit now no longer remained the Sun Spirit, but
had left through the Mystery of Golgotha those regions through which
the human being can pass only outside the physical body, and had come
into the earthly existence; that He was the only divine-spiritual
Being who had ever entered upon earthly existence. We meet 
although only by means of spiritual research  with persons even
in the first period of Christian evolution who felt very deeply in
their inner being that Christ, came out of the sphere of spirits who
did not need to pass through birth and death, for whom birth and death
are only a metamorphosis, had descended and passed through birth and
death. This descent of Christ to the earth was the entire essential
feeling experienced during the first period in Christian evolution.
This descent was far more important for human beings of that time than
what followed after the descent. The fact that Christ wished to be in
a community with human beings, that He desired to share in the two
most significant experiences  birth and death  this was
felt in circles of the initiates as the genuine religious impulse.
This was possible only because man still possessed some degree of
inner, living thinking; because until the fourth Christian century
thinking had not yet been entirely paralysed, had not become entirely
abstract, because it still filled the human being as does breathing at
the present time in a physical relation. For this reason it was felt
that Christ had carried out the human destiny of the descent, which
the other spiritual-divine beings had not done for the reason that
being born and dying are not characteristic of the gods, but only of
human beings. This is the magnificent element in the belief of
initiates in the first Christian centuries: that they felt Christ had
really become a human being, had really taken upon himself human
destiny; that He is the only one of the divine-spiritual beings who
had shared this destiny with man.

Now, however, it is necessary that the truth become clear to the human
soul that this soul of man, in the degree that it belongs to the world
of pre-earthly existence, cannot really die. For this reason has come
about what we associate with the resurrection of Christ: the victory
of Christ over death, symbolizing the victory of every human soul over
death. And the ancient idea, I should like to say, of the state of
being unborn has blended with the new idea of resurrection which had
previously existed but not with the same intensity. Since the Event of
Golgotha has come about, this became in a way the expression for what
is most important of all in the earthly evolution of man.

While thinking was still living, man felt not the least fear of death;
this was not for him an extraordinary occurrence. This is something of
the utmost importance in the history of human evolution, that death
was viewed by man as something entirely different, something obvious,
whereas, as man suffered the loss more and more of the consciousness
of a pre-earthly existence, abstract thinking, with the physical body
as its instrumentality, brought about more and more fear of death and
the belief that death is something final. Ancient humanity had little
need for the idea of resurrection, but rather that of the descent to
the earth in common with the Christ. As, however, human beings have
advanced further and further into abstract thinking, they needed more
and more a view out of the earthly existence, a view in the direction
of immortality. This outlook is bestowed upon humanity through viewing
in the right way the fact of Christ's resurrection. This fact I have
set forth in books, lectures, and cycles of lectures many times over.
Both facts  the descent of Christ to birth and death and the
fact of His resurrection, the fact of victory over death  until
the fourth Christian century, this could be clear to humanity in its
feeling nature, since living thinking was then still in existence.
After the fourth Post-Christian century, as abstract thinking
developed further and further, humanity became less and less capable
of connecting thoughts with the content of the Mystery of Golgotha. It
has actually been the destiny of humanity in its evolution that,
during the period in which man achieved through abstract thinking his
own freedom, the understanding of Christ Jesus, which had existed
during the earliest Christian centuries, had to disappear. That is,
because of the fact that those writings designated as the Gnostic,
a term which has become almost contemptuous, have been almost
utterly eliminated except for a few residues with which very little
can be accomplished. What had been thought by those persons in the
first centuries who still possessed some knowledge of living thinking
was destroyed. This we know only through writings of their opponents.
Just imagine what the situation would be if, through some kind of
accident, all anthroposophical books and other writings should
disappear, and that the nature of anthroposophy would have to be
adjudged only on the basis of writings by its opponents. Just so much
is known today by people who depend upon external documents regarding
Gnosis. That most extraordinary understanding of Christ by Gnosis,
enclosed within itself, was lost to humanity. Most of all did that
awareness completely disappear that the Christ had something to do
with the sun, and that He had descended to the earth and passed on
Golgotha through a destiny common with that of humanity. All of these
relationships, especially the feelings associated with such things,
were lost to humanity. More and more there came about the abstract
interpretations, the abstract thoughts.

One of those who struggled out of the character of that period toward
an understanding of Christianity is to be seen in Augustine. In this
Augustine we see a spirit who could no longer understand the ancient
form of the conception of nature. You know that Augustine is said to
have been a Manichean. Augustine narrates this himself. But all that
lies back of these things can no longer be rightly seen through by
means of external thinking. What Augustine called Manicheanism, what
is called at present the teaching of Mani, is only the degenerate
outcome of an ancient teaching which conceived the Spirit only as
creative and knew no difference between matter and spirit. No spirit
was existent that did not create and what it created was seen by the
human being as matter. Just as little conception did these ancient
times have of mere matter; on the contrary, spirit existed in
everything. This was something that Augustine could not understand.
What Gnosis understood, and what was no longer understood later; what
our own period does not at all understand,  this is true: no
matter exists of itself; this was known by the Manicheans and they
beheld the descent of Christ in the light of this view. Augustine
could no longer make anything out of this; the time had passed, the
possibility of making anything out of it, because the documents had
been destroyed and the ancient clairvoyance had been blotted out. Thus
Augustine, after long intense superhuman struggle arrived at the
decision that he could not of himself attain to truth, but must adjust
himself to what the Catholic church prescribed as truth: to submit
himself to the authority of the Catholic church. And this mood 
consider it at first as a mood  remained, contained alive
especially for the reason that thinking became ever more abstract. In
reality it was only slowly and gradually that thinking was disabled.

And the Scholastics in their greatness  they really are great
 still lived within a trace of knowledge that thinking on the
earth was derived from a super-earthly thinking, that man lived within
a heavenly thinking. Within this evolution however the possibility was
gradually more and more completely lost to conceive the Event of
Golgotha as something alive. It is actually true that the advanced
theology of the nineteenth century, because it desired to be
scientific in the modern sense, lost the Christ; that theology was
happy to have at last instead the simple man of Nazareth.
Christ was now the loftiest human being on earth. Of the
Christ indwelling within Jesus no conception could any longer be
formed.

Thus the evolution since the fourth Post-Christian century has
consisted of a gradual loss of the connection of man with the Christ
in that living form as it was conceived by many persons during the
first centuries of Christianity. Thus it came about, moreover, that
the content of the gospels was less and less understood. You see, the
human beings who lived during the first centuries of Christianity
would have considered it utterly astonishing to speak of
contradictions in the gospels. It is as if some one was familiar with
the picture of a human being taken from the front and that a
photograph was brought to him taken in profile, and if he should say:
This cannot be a picture of the same person  thus
would it have appeared to persons of the first Christian centuries if
one had spoken to them of contradictions in the Gospels. They knew
very well that the four Gospels simply present a picture taken from
four different points of view. The human being of the present time
would say that these are exceptional presentations, that they are from
all different sides. In the spiritual world everything is far richer;
in the spiritual world photographs would have to be taken from various
sides as one has four Gospels. More and more arrived the time in which
nothing was known any longer in the ancient sense of the Event of
Golgotha. But this Event of Golgotha is of such a nature as can be
conceived only from a spiritual point of view. It is indeed
interesting that the historians generally slip around the Event of
Golgotha. We have now the historian Ranke, considered a distinguished
writer of history, who declares actually that one does not mention
this, just omits it. If one omits from history the most important
thing of all, no history can come into existence. Even if a person has
no connection with the spiritual world and thus cannot understand the
Mystery of Golgotha, he would still have to admit its tremendous
influence. But history is written at the present time without mention
of the enormous influence of the Mystery of Golgotha. The capacity has
ever more and more disappeared to view the Mystery of Golgotha in the
right manner.

We can view the matter, however, from entirely different points of
view; we can say to ourselves: in the course of evolution humanity
arrived at the necessity of having Christ in its midst. Gradually more
and more human beings lost the consciousness of their belonging to the
pre-earthly existence. This was no longer in their view; finally human
beings knew only that they existed after their birth on the earth.
Then the Christ came to them, in order to make manifest to them
through His descent that there is a pre-earthly existence; in order to
bestow upon them an understanding of what no longer lived within their
own consciousness. Since human beings no longer possessed this
relation in their own consciousness they were to achieve a new
connection through their relation to Christ, who had passed through
the Event of Golgotha. The Christ had, in a sense, bestowed Himself
upon humanity in that period during which the epoch was gradually to
arise for humanity to ascend to freedom. As thinking now became more
and more abstract there was no longer any possibility to view in
thinking the Mystery of Golgotha. But the content of the New Testament
history was so enrapturing, so appealing to the human heart, that even
by reason of the purely external traditions that which could no longer
be grasped by thought still continued to exist for a certain time.

If we survey the first period during which Christianity was spreading
out, we see that traditions existed which, in the final analysis, were
derived from the Gospels, that the child-like heart took possession
more and more of the picture of the Palestine events; but we see at
the same time how a cognitional experience of the Mystery of Golgotha
was being lost. In the same degree in which dead thinking came about,
there was overshadowed also the child-like memory of the Palestine
time; human beings lost their connection with Christ Jesus and people
were happy when the connection with the human being Jesus could still
be maintained. And now we are within our own present time; here, in
reality  although it is not yet observed  the
consciousness of the connection with Christ Jesus has already
disappeared. In tradition human beings still hold fast to the
doctrines and have no living inner connection with Christ Jesus. One
need only observe how external the festivals of the year have become.
How external the Easter festival has become for human beings of the
present time, whereas this Easter festival was such for human beings
of an earlier time that men experienced in deepest inwardness what can
be called memory of the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ had given Himself
to human beings in a time when humanity had to develop its
consciousness of freedom. This had in a certain sense been developed.
But this would become merely external if the relation with the Christ
could not be found again. This cannot be found unless we begin to seek
for a spiritual knowledge. Spiritual knowledge, as this is sought by
anthroposophy, will find again the relation with the Christ. This
relation can be found only spiritually. What occurred on Golgotha is
not merely an event that has laid hold upon the physical, earthly
history of humanity, but also a spiritual event. No one can understand
the Event of Golgotha who does not understand it in the spirit.
Anthroposophical spiritual science, therefore, is at the same time
preparation for a new understanding of the Christ and of the Mystery
of Golgotha. Indeed, when we consider this fact, we are reminded of
the deeply significant Gospel statement: Lo, I am with you
always, even to the end of the world. And there certainly shines
out from this expression that He was not there only when the Event of
Golgotha occurred; that he remains with human beings as a spiritual
being, who can be found in the spirit. We need not consider as
spiritual, therefore, only what radiates out of the Gospels, but we
know that Christ is with us, that when at present, provided with
spiritual knowledge, we listen to what is manifest concerning Him out
of the spiritual world, this is a manifestation of Christ. This is the
manifestation of Christ just as much as what we gain when we look into
the Gospels.

I have many things still to say unto you but you could not bear
them now,  this is a reference to the time when Christ is
again to be seen. And now this time approaches; it is already here.
Humanity would lose the Christ if it were not possible again in a new
way, in spiritual knowledge, to gain the Christ. In this way must much
more become understandable to us which in an earlier time was
connected with the Mystery of Golgotha, but has been lost because the
spiritual understanding of it has been lost. How people struggle with
the present intellectualism with the statement said to have been
spoken by Christ that the Kingdom of God had come down to the earth,
that an entirely new life was to begin. It is so immensely clever to
say at the present time that everything on the earth has remained,
after all, such as it was before. This is obviously clever, but the
other question must be put in the spirit of this statement of Christ:
is one really speaking in a truly Christian, spiritual understanding
in supposing that any kind of external spiritual kingdom was to be set
up? An external spiritual kingdom would be, of course, physical. This
contradiction, you see, is not observed. But it is extremely
conspicuous that people have become extraordinarily clever at the
present time and still this cleverness cannot be justified even in its
own realm.

I should like to call your attention to something very interesting,
even though this really separates us from our actual theme. The Vienna
geologist, Eduard Suess, a distinguished research scientist, says in
his book The Countenance of the Earth that this countenance of
the earth must have been entirely different, stones much more living
than at present, that man is walking at the present time really upon a
dead earth. The clods over which we walk belong to a dying world.
Geology assumes that the earth was once far more living and has
gradually passed over into the dead state. Suess says in regard to an
entirely different area what Christ said concerning the spiritual life
of the earth. If only this were true, that the earth will fall to
pieces in a far distant future time when it will be reduced to dust in
the cosmos, if what occurs to the human being did not occur to the
earth  that the body becomes dust, but the spirit lives further
 then all of us would be included in this turning into dust.
With this earth we are beholding what leads over into the Jupiter
existence; we look already toward a new earth.

With regard to the physical, this view of the turning of the earth
into dust is true; with regard to the spirit-soul something different
is valid. For the ancient initiates of the time of the Mystery of
Golgotha it was quite clear that with the ancient civilization, the
ancient mysteries, things had come to an end. The manner in which the
ancient human beings had lived with their gods had come to an end; the
manner in which they had lived with manifestations of nature had come
to an end. But the gods bestow upon human beings the possibility of
approaching a future in the spirit. What was acquired in ancient times
as knowledge out of the earth belongs to the path; a new time must
arrive in which the human being must bring about a kingdom by means of
his own will, in which man shall give life again to a dead thinking by
means of his own forces. This was a prophecy at the time of the
Mystery of Golgotha. This kingdom came about also in an external way,
it is to be understood, to be accepted, only by human beings of the
present time. At the present time we must feel that the Kingdom of
Heaven of which Christ speaks must by seen by us upon the earth as the
Christ works upon the earth. This must be the fulfilment upon the
earth, and the fulfilment of this Kingdom of Heaven must be earnestly
conceived precisely in our present time. We experience in all areas
that the human being is beginning to confront the peril of being cut
off from the spiritual world and from his own being if he does not
find access to the spiritual world.